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   IP AddressWorks: No Garden-Variety Tool March 22, 1999
While some vendors claim that a standards-based IP management system is unattainable, Process Software Corp.'s new IP AddressWorks proves them wrong, as we learned in an exclusive test of a beta version in our Real-World Labs®. With its support of DNS RFCs 1996 and 2136, as well as other Internet drafts proposing standardized communications between DHCP and DNS, DHCP failover protocol and a DCHP Server MIB, IP AddressWorks does not require use with Process Software's DNS servers. And on top of all its flexibility, price per node is comparable to the competition's. I very much appreciated IP AddressWorks' rigid commitment to nonproprietary protocols. Unlike other vendors, Process Software is working with the IETF and multicorporation, standards-based groups to define and implement interoperable protocols. It is deeply involved in the interactions between DHCP and DNS via Internet drafts. The goal of this research and use of open protocols is to ensure that future standard-setting programs, such as BIND, will support these protocols, so you won't be forced to use the vendor's DHCP and DNS daemons. You can relinquish their daemons, and still retain the brains of Process Software's IP management software. DHCP server failover illustrates this functionality. Process Software has coauthored a "safe-failover standard" (see "Destined to Failover" at www.networkcomputing.com/1006/1006sp2side1.html). By writing IETF Internet drafts about DHCP and DNS interactions, it is using open protocols while others have proprietary protocols. IP AddressWorks will always be able to use the latest standard DHCP and DNS daemons. IP AddressWorks supports systems other than NT and Unix, which is a rarity. If you run VMS, you may appreciate that IP AddressWorks is the only commercial IP address management product in this space that supports full DNS and DHCP for OpenVMS. IP AddressWorks also institutes an open standards method for storing information. Rather than tying up the information in a proprietary SQL database, I stored our IP data in a Netscape Communications Corp. Netcenter 3.1 LDAP server. I directly accessed our IP information without the IP management tool. I was able to write a simple program that loaded information from our LDAP server and created a report. While many IP address management products import and export from an LDAP server, only a few (such as Check Point Software Technologies' MetaIP) store their data directly in that server. During testing, I imported all the machines in our server's ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) cache. This is handy, since machines will show up in the ARP cache when they ask for DHCP services. Adding new machines to our pool was a snap, thanks to IP AddressWorks' GUI's drag-and-drop ability. n Jeff Ballard works for the University of Wisconsin. Send your comments on this article to him at jballard@nwc.com.
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